As channel conditions for a wireless communication device change, the device may switch (e.g., handover or reselect) from one wireless link to another in order to maintain service continuity. The device may for example switch from accessing the system via one access node, cell, sector, or beam (any of which may serve as a “link”) to accessing the system via a different access node, cell, sector, or beam. Towards this end, when channel conditions on the link via which the device currently accesses the system deteriorates, the system may evaluate which of different candidate links the device should switch to, if any. The device in this regard may perform measurements on the different candidate links and report those measurements to another node in the network (e.g., the serving access node), so that the other node can make the link switch decision.
Known approaches report such measurements from the device to the network at the radio resource control (RRC) layer. Reporting measurements at this relatively high layer enables the device to convey rich, reliable measurement information. But RRC layer reporting requires considerable signaling overhead, heavy radio resource usage, and potentially high latency. High latency proves especially unattractive where a link switch must be performed quickly, e.g., before the serving link's quality degrades excessively.